Looking for demos to practice playtesting
I'm looking to practice playtesting, QA feedback, and content creation by testing demos. To prevent any bad actors from trying to give me malware or whatever; I'd prefer to just keep it to demos already on itch.io or Steam. If you've developed games for sites like Crazy Games or similar and just want my feedback on a game you have on there for the sake of your future projects, that's cool too.
My focus will be on looking for bugs, exploits, anything UX/UI a player may find confusing or unclear, balance concerns such as underperforming mechanics or dominant strategies, and game feel in general.
I can record sessions with OBS or share my screen live through Discord (your server or mine, whichever you prefer) and narrate my first impressions/reactions and thought processes in real time, and I can provide written feedback and reproduction steps when possible afterwards if you'd like. I'll start by offering 10-45 mins depending on the length of the game.
I’m currently doing this unpaid because I genuinely just want to improve my testing, feedback, and game analysis skills while also helping other indie developers at the same time. I also want to start creating gameplay/review-style content for YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram as part of practicing content creation and growing my channels, as a sort of supplementation to my portfolio/resume and hopefully, in the future, marketing for my own projects and their devlogs. They’re still very small, as I've only ever used them before for consuming content. So I can't promise any kind of promotional reach yet in that regard. I wouldn't upload anything anywhere without you explicitly requesting that I do. I'm moreso just trying to be completely transparent about all of my reasons for doing this. To be clear the raw unedited playtest recording that I do would be privately for you.
I have a B.A.S. in Game Design and I’m also a solo developer myself, so I understand how much time, experimentation, and multidisciplinary work goes into making games — especially independently, and the vulnerability required to show your work to a whole internet of strangers. Because of that, my goal is to provide feedback that is constructive, respectful, and genuinely useful without getting in the way of a project’s success or damaging its reputation unnecessarily. If I encounter any concerns or have any negative impressions; I insist on communicating those privately,thoughtfully, and as respectfully as I can. That's what I would hope for when releasing my own projects for constructive feedback.
If you have a demo,/prototype, you’d like tested, feel free to plug it in the comments and let me know how you want to do it. When I get to your game I'll send you a message on here and with my email or discord name (whichever you prefer) and we'll go on from there. I won't turn down any game. That being said: I'm just one man, and don't know how many folks are going to respond to this post, so I'm going to try and do things on a first come first serve basis to be as fair to everyone as I can.
Thank you